At an uncreatively loose end ...

She Was Entirely Unprepared For What Awaited Her.

I do so envy people who can have two or three paintings on the go at once. Mostly by the time I am finishing one picture I already have a good idea of What Next. But at the moment I am at a loose and listless end and being overtaken by life, bulldozers and everything.

The brilliant upside is that a gallery in the north of England is taking 9 of my collages and two paintings (I will put up a link to it in the next post).

The frustrating downside is trying to get them to the stage of being sent off - which means constant badgering of the printer (in charge of scanning) and framer (in charge of guess what) at a time when short Spanish summertime hours are in operation.

Strangely, this quaint custom does not seem to apply to the team driving three earthmovers and one rock breaker not ten yards from my studio door. They are shunting backwards and forwards all day, eleven hours a day, like their lives depended on it, stirring up dust storms and blasting noise in our direction. Anyone who knows me knows I have an exceptionally low noise threshold. I hate it.
I am the sort that visibly winces and gibbers when the crackly sound system in the supermarket swings into action informing shoppers of the latest offers. So imagine ...

The night before last, after midnight, while real peace reigned at last, I did this monoprint collage, triggered by a sentence I had copied down (and thought would make a good title) in a sketch book while reading the biography of the eighteenth century epic artist Benjamin Robert Haydon. The poor man killed himself in a somewhat ham-fisted and gruesome manner, driven to end his life by debts, despair and disappointment.

I drew the line (so to speak and you will be glad to hear) at the frightful mess on the floor boards ...

Simply black and white

I really DO love black ink and white paper!

And I also love the beautifully ever so subtly mottled shades of Canson paper. I get crazes on certain Canson colours. At one time it was the dusty blue one. Right now it's the greys and fawns.

These two collages were made from chopped up monoprints. The effect is a bit like a linoprint but with none of that medium's restrictions. Or (let's face it) time consumption. I like playing around with the pieces and moving them around. Which is one thing you can't do with a linocut.

I had Flora and the arrival of spring in the back of my mind as I assembled this image. Somehow it didn't seem finished until I put her in this paper mount with a primitive sort of frame. Gives it the folksy feel I was after.

Previously I made this other collaged monoprint inspired by my finishing off the Haworth paper cut - I obviously wasn't ready to leave the Brontës behind. I took a line from Emily as a point of departure: 

Lone, among the mountains cold ...

which is now the title.

I will be putting them in my Etsy shop when I next feel in an uploading kinda mood!

In the meantime I am going to clean up the ink trails left by one of the cats after he nonchalantly sauntered across the inked up glass sheet. Here are Freddo's paw marks on my desk. Nice monoprint! Don't even start me on the ones on my beige leather sofa .... 

Lucky I'm not a houseproud maruja!

Monoprints, yay!

Two Sisters

Well, it's something I'd been promising myself to do for a while now but just hadn't got round to hunting out the ink and glass and finding a space for the ensuing mess on my cuttings strewn worktop. So along came two reminders in one week: images on tv of Tracy Emin producing a monoprint and a post on Anna Wilson-Patterson's splendid blog about it. 

The fates had conspired ...

So now I'm on a roll.

I used some of the antique doll images in my sketchbook which have served as the basis for my paper cut portraits as a point of departure.

This was the first I pulled that I was vaguely satisfied with:

Portrait

 I love the way two opposite poles come together in one image: the precision of line and the randomness of the fuzz and blotching and brush strokes (I have an aversion to rollers). Then there is the childish excitement (albeit often followed by disappointment) of pulling the paper away and discovering - success or failure.

Black Cat

The Two Sisters is the last thing I have done and voila, brings together monoprinting and my love of paper and scissors. I think it's an avenue I will explore at length and enjoy dawdling in!